Page 29 of Room for Us
The trunk of the Jeep flips up, and she begins unpacking it. Potted plants, trays with tens of smaller shoots, and finally large bags of what I assume are soil and fertilizer. She stacks everything near the porch, closes up the car, and disappears around the side of the house. A few minutes later she reappears with a shovel and begins to attack the plot of bare earth in front of the porch. Before long, the cardigan is discarded and her arms and chest glisten with sweat.
I want to lick her clean.
During a long, mostly cold shower this morning, I considered a handful of ways to make amends for what happened last night, but eventually admitted every one of them would obliterate my master plan of keeping my distance.
How can I keep her away without being an asshole?
Does she have any idea the effect she has on me?
No. She doesn’t.
She has no idea the danger she’s in. That we’re both in. How close I am to the edge. To giving in to this attraction.
If I were a better man, she’d never know. But the slope is too slippery, and I’m not strong enough. I’m an addict whose normal methods of escape aren’t available. I need something—someone—to stand between my psyche and a swift fall into oblivion.
If I were a better man…
… but I’m not.
19
Divorce is an expensive vacuum. A Hoover or Dyson. Once it turns on and turns on you, it sucks out a piece of you, leaving… you guessed it, a vacuum (n) a space entirely devoid of matter. Emptiness where there used to be security—however misled—and the faith that this is the one and we’ll grow old together and through sickness and health.
I once thought I was one of the lucky ones. Faced with the baggage of a dad who abandoned his family—and the massive trust issues skipping merrily alongside that—it was a miracle Chris and I made it to our one-year anniversary. But he was so patient, so understanding. He loved me, baggage and all. Or so I convinced myself.
Now, as I drive a narrow-headed shovel into the hard dirt of one of the front yard’s plots, laboriously aerating the soil like Celeste suggested, I think about Chris, and failed vows, and how stupid and naive I was in my early twenties.
There’s no such thing as happily ever after. Not for me. I’ve always known it, even when I allowed myself those years of denial. Despite my mom turning her life around after Dad left, going back to school, becoming a psychologist, and trying her best to undo all the damage on my young psyche, it was always too late. I fell for a man perfectly suited to fulfilling my deep-seated conviction that lifelong romantic love was a lie.
Chris never accepted my baggage—he ignored it. And I was happy to let him. We didn’t talk about why every time he went out with his guy friends, I stayed up until he came home. Why I hated him going on trips, even overnight, without me. Why in the last few years, as we tried to get pregnant, I never let him see me cry—because then I would have to explain the mixed bag of terror and excitement I felt at the prospect of becoming a mother. I would have to admit my flaws and insecurities. My fears. Own up to not measuring up to the vision of me we’d both created.
There was never any unpacking, sorting, washing, or organizing of our messy histories. No deepening intimacy as we identified all the ways our pasts affected and shaped our relationship. As long as I acted like the girlfriend, fiancée, and wife he wanted me to be—that I wanted myself to be—everything was fine.
Until I tried to become a mother and everything fell apart.
“Are you digging a grave or something?”
Dirt flies from my shovel as I yelp and stumble back. Spinning around, I see my troublesome guest standing on the lowest porch step. He comes together in pieces—tentative expression, dark hair, broad shoulders, hawkish eyes, two glasses of iced tea. Before I can fully process what he’s doing, he extends one of the glasses to me.
“I saw you from upstairs. You looked”—his eerie eyes track briefly down my body, and goose bumps ripple over my skin—“like you needed a break.”
Over the usual faded jeans he wears a T-shirt some cloudy color between blue and gray. It’s thin enough to provide a tantalizing hint of flat pecs and abdomen. I haven’t seen his bare arms before—to my dismay, they’re corded with muscle, thick and sinewy. He must have good genes. Either that, or he spends all those hours in his room doing push-ups, which I can’t picture at all. It’s much easier to imagine him drinking from a flask and brooding at the window.
Dropping the shovel to the path, I accept the glass, carefully avoiding his fingers. “Thank you.” The cold condensation is glorious against my chafed palms.
“You’re welcome.” He doesn’t smile, but his voice is the mildest I’ve heard it. Almost… nice. Taking a sip of his tea, he nods toward the plot behind me. “A little gardening?”
I nod. “Finally warm enough.”
He glances at the sky, soft blue and clear. The high today is sixty-eight, a little above average for this time of year.
“That’s right,” he muses. “I’d forgotten how late summer hits in the mountains.”
“Yep. It’ll be heating up more over the next few weeks, but the nights stay pretty chilly year-round.”
I take a gulp of iced tea, avoiding his eyes. My head churns with this unexpected development—him talking to me like I’m more than the hired help. I wonder if he’s buttering me up before serving me with another outrageous demand. I decide to take the bull by the horns. No more dancing around this guy like he has any power over me. I’ve been down that road.
“Thatta girl,” whispers Aunt B.
